Japan: News

United Airlines said it plans to close three of four flight attendant bases outside the United States amidst the plummet in travel demand due to the coronavirus outbreak.
The airline made the announcement in a memorandum to crewmembers that was shown to Frequent Business Traveler.
United will close its bases in Frankfurt, Hong Kong, and Tokyo effective October 1. The London base will remain open, according John Slater, who authored the memo.
The …

While cautioning that the coronavirus was not gone from Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced the end of his state of emergency declaration and urged the Japanese people to continue to adhere to strict social-distancing guidelines.
Health officials there reported just 851 deaths and the government was never forced to implement a lockdown.
The Japan Tourism Agency meanwhile said it is considering an $18 billion campaign to stimulate travel within the country. …

IN BRIEF
New York City’s mayor said the city may meet the criteria to begin to reopen the economy there in the first half of June.
Joseph La Lima, a barber in Kingston, New York, who defied the state’s lockdown measures and continued to cut hair from the back of his shop, may have infected over a dozen people, according to Governor Andrew Cuomo. The Ulster County district attorney’s office has launched …

Just as the Japanese government is seeking to ease domestic travel restrictions, it announced Tuesday it has expanded the list of countries that visitors to the Land of the Rising Sun cannot have set foot in within the two-week period prior to arriving in Japan.
The list adds 13 nations, including five South and Central American countries that include Colombia, Mexico, and Uruguay.
The country first declared a nationwide state of emergency …

IN BRIEF
As the number of novel coronavirus infections passed the 1.8 million mark, many countries found themselves in a kind of balancing act, weighing the benefits of continuing the lockdown versus getting their economies moving again.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, in his daily press briefing, said that the death toll in the state had reached over 10,000, but said “The worst is over if we continue to be smart moving …

Although the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Summer Games have been postponed to next year, Haneda Airport began international operations at Terminal 2, which previously only served domestic flights.
All Nippon Airways, which operates out of Terminals 2 and 3 at Haneda, made significant improvements to the terminal, including the addition of customs, immigration, and quarantine space as part of the city’s plans to prepare for travelers arriving for the Olympics.
The airline said …

Postponing the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games may be a foregone conclusion said Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday.
The prime minister said that this may be a necessary step if the games cannot be held in “a complete” manner.
“If that is difficult, we would have no choice but to decide to postpone with athletes in the first priority,” he said, emphasizing that canceling the Tokyo Games was not an option.
Indeed, …

The coronavirus is now affecting 104 countries and territories across the globe and many travelers are postponing or cancelling their travel plans as a result.
In some cases, a traveler is holding off because travel to his destination is simply not possible due to quarantine and containment rules; in others, it’s simply a desire not to go somewhere where one might end up with the coronavirus or trapped in a quarantined …

In early May, Warren Buffett divested all of his investment firm’s holdings in the four major U.S. airlines, warning that the “world has changed” for the aviation industry due to the coronavirus crisis. In mid May, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said he saw a bumpy road ahead for the airline industry and predicted that a major carrier would not survive 2020 as a result.
It appears Buffett and Calhoun were on …